Just under the wire!
I received Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl as one of a dozen (literally) books for Christmas. In my family I’m the ‘allergy girl’ though reading Beasley’s account of 30 years of severe food allergies has me counting my blessings.
This memoir is more informative than anecdotal; but rather than reading like a text book, Birthday Girl takes a dense subject for many and makes it entertaining.
In 1992, Sandra’s fourth grade class was visited by a nutritionist regarding the newly developed food pyramid.
3 glasses of whole milk? Yep, according to her diagram, that was the way to go.
…
“What if you don’t drink milk?” [A classmate] asked.
“There’s cheese… the important thing is your daily calcium intake.”
“What if you can’t eat cheese?”
The nutritionist paused. “You should eat eggs,” she said.
“What if you can’t eat eggs?” Another kid asked.
I knew what they were getting at … My classmate raised his hand. “What if you can’t eat beef? Or ice cream? Or pizza, not even if you picked the cheese off?”
“Well,” the nutrionist said brightly. “That’s not somebody designed to survive, now, is it?”
Allergic to dairy (not lactose intolerant, actually allergic), soy, beef, shrimp, cucumbers, cantaloupe, mango, cashews, swordfish, mustard, and more Beasley talks about her experiences growing up in a world that has only recently begun making strives to giving Allergy Kids a safe experience at school, baseball games and other places outside of their homes.
If you’re not already interested in the subject matter, Birthday Girl may not be for you but it’s a fun quick read on an ever growing epidemic.